Apple is having a press event tomorrow morning, during which they are going to announce the new features for iPhone's 4.0 firmware. There is plenty of speculation afoot in these final hours, and rather than rewrite them all (you have fingers, you can find them yourself) or speculate on what features I think are going to be announced, I'm going to list the features that I personally would like to see.

1. Multitasking. Everyone seems to be banking on this idea, and I'll jump on it. I like it how if I double-click my home button, it opens up a menu that lets me play the last song I was listening to. If they can integrate a more robust way of doing this, or allow me to switch between apps without having to go back to the homescreen, I'd be happy.

2. Bluetooth keyboard support. I could be writing this post on my iPhone right now. If I had a keyboard to use with my iPhone, I would definitely be on my computer less.

3. Wireless LAN support. Let my iPhone connect to my home iTunes network, and stream music from my iMac to my iPhone. I know that there are apps out that that let you do this (Simpify Media, etc) but I think Apple would do a better job with it. Also, let me sync my iPhone without having to actually plug it in.

4. The ability to remove the "Stocks" and "Compass" apps from my iPhone.

5. NES and SNES emulator. What, a guy can wish! no comments

It's 1 AM and I can't stop playing this game. It's like Mirror's Edge meets Forza Motorsport. Jet Car Stunts is so painfuly simple, addictively fast-paced and easy to play that I want to go wake up my roomates to get them into it. Plus it has Open Feint integration so I can whup on everyone, achievement-wise.

If you've ever seen Track Mania then you can clearly imagine this game. You drive a Jet/Formula 1 vehicle miles above the earth on floating tracks. Don't worry! It looks harder to control than it is. And so what about the child-friendly button layout!

Look. It's awesome, okay. Just go try it out and come back and let me know if it wasn't the most fun you've had on your iPhone in about a year.

You're welcome. no comments

Russ and I took a casual romantic stroll down to the local Apple Store and had some good hands on with the iPad. We took it through its paces, testing out most of the native apps plus some Rock Band time thrown in there as well. All in all, we came out impressed with the hardware but were ultimately restricted by the scope of the software and its indulgent pricing. Does it have a place in our family of electronics? Yes, but to a limited extent.

Watching television, surfing the web on your couch or organising your schedule all feels great on the device. Problem is, mobile OS X 3.x's deficiencies are only exacerbated on the juiced-uped device. The large screen feels strikingly barren, and the fast internals are woefully under-utilised. Only time will tell if developers leverage the unique qualities of the iPad to set it apart from being the iPod Touch XL. For now, the iPad can be relegated to luxury item status, with early adopters clearly putting their faith in the new in-between category. For the rest of us, we have this.

Catch all the skin-on-glass action in the video. no comments

Hey dude. Remember that game called PuzzleQuest: Challenge of the Warlords? You know, that one that seamlessly mixed RPG elements with Bejeweled-style gameplay, and it was frighteningly addictive? Well, I've found a ridiculously fun substitute, and I call it Sword & Poker. The developers call it that, too.

The game is a unique take on poker that also features RPG elements. You are given a tile of nine cards (in a 3x3 pattern), with four cards in your hand. You then can use two of those cards on either side of the 3x3 pattern to create pairs, straights, flushes, etc. It sounds a little confusing written down, but after about 30 seconds with the game you'll figure it out. Your opponent shares turns with you, and the higher hand you have, the higher damage you give to the enemy. You can also buy better weapons which allow you to cause more damage, as well as use spells which can do things like make your opponent skip a turn.

Truth be told, I haven't paid for an iPhone game in many months, but after a few minutes with the lite version of this game I bought the full version for $4 without hesitation. The lite version is really robust, so I would try it out first before buying it to make sure it's what you're looking for. Regardless, this game is the new awesome. Check it out.

Download:
Sword & Poker (full game)
Sword & Poker (lite version) no comments

I've never seen the appeal of browser games like Farmville. When it comes down to it, I can think of 100 things I'd rather do that play a farming game on my PC. But surprisingly, I find myself playing ngmoco's We Rule a lot. Mostly because it's on the iPhone and it lets me jump in and out of it quickly while on the go. Basically, you build a kingdom and plant crops, which you then harvest and turn a profit, allowing you to buy more crops. You can also use your money to buy things to decorate your kingdom, and the game lets you rearrange them as you see fit, as your kingdom grows.

My favorite aspect of the game is that each of the crops have different growth times; if you know you're going to be in a movie for two hours, you can plant strawberries, which will be ready in an hour and a half. Take too long to harvest, though, and your crops will spoil and you'll have to start all over again.

As fun as the game is, I'm already starting to see the seams in it. For instance, building things like houses and schools have no real benefit, because they give back minuscule amounts of gold and XP. There are some objects, like trees and roads, which only serve to make your kingdom more appealing. But in the end, you can't really "beat" the game anyway, so it shouldn't matter where your money goes.

The game is free, although you can purchase "mojo" with real money, which speeds up the growth time of your crops. Honestly, I like the speed of the game without microtransactions. There's no real point to the game, so I'm okay with taking my time with it. After all, Rome wasn't built in a day, right?

Oh, and add me as your friend: onionsaregross no comments

It's a little-known fact that four-fifths of theeasymode.com staff (or 80%….MATH!) uses Apple products as our primary computers. It's also a little-known fact that all five-fiths of us like to play these things called video games. Personally, I've loaded Windows onto my beautiful, shiny 27" iMac just so I can play PC games from time to time. But when it comes down to it, I'd much rather play games on my iMac natively rather than boot up Windows. This is why Valve's announcement yesterday that Steam is coming to Macs is so exciting to me. And it should be exciting to you too (if you own a Mac), and here's why:

1. Backwards compatibility: Valve has already announced that they're bringing their Source engine to the Mac Steam. They mentioned that these specific games will be available in April: Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series. That's a great start.

2. "Steam Play": Basically, this feature means that if you bought a game on Steam for Windows, you can play it on Steam for Mac, for free. Not only that, but they touted a feature called "Steam Cloud" which would allow you to play a game on one PC and jump to that same spot on a Mac.

3. Future investment: Steam has promised that all future Valve games will launch simultaneously on Mac, Windows, and the Xbox 360 from here on out. I hope a lot of developers follow suit, now that Steam will give them a wide exposure to Mac gamers.

4. Valve's first Mac-friendly release will be Portal 2. Oh yes. no comments

Up until last week, I've used Google as my homepage for several years. Sure, I know that most browsers have a Google search bar on the top-right of the toolbar, but I never got around to using it. I've finally changed things up a bit, and I'm now using Fav4.org as my homepage.

Fav4.org lets you set up four simple website links from the dozens of icons they have available. You can see my configuration above. At first I didn't like this new setup, until I found one trick that isn't mentioned on the site at all: they map these four links to the "ASDF" keys. In other words, I can open up my browser and press the letter "A" to go to Google, or "S" to go to Facebook, etc. Since I already surf with my left hand on the home row (thanks, typing class in 1995!), this is a very natural way for me to browse. Try it out! no comments

As a Mac owner for over three years now (my how the time flew by), I was never happy with my unzipping and zipping. For the longest time I simply used the default unzipping app for OSX, Archive Utility, or the Mac-approved StuffIt Expander. Problem is, I've found both apps to be buggy, and many times I would have to unzip a folder with the one app simply because it wouldn't work in the other. After getting frustrated enough with this two-punch combo, I decided to seek out something else, and I then found Unarchiver.

Unarchiver has two features that make it my favorite unzipper. First of all, it's free and unzips everything under the sun. Secondly, you can set it to send the zipped folder into the trash after you unzip it. Doesn't sound like much, but this one little feature has saved me all sorts of clicks and drags to the trashcan.



On the zipping side of the house, I use YemuZip. It's a barebones app that works just like you want it to - you drag a file, group of files, or a folder into the app, tell it what you want to call the zipped folder, and bam. There's not much else to it, but do you really need anything more than that? no comments

Obama's first State of the Union address, tens of thousands of people dead and dying after the Haiti earthquake, a new Bin Laden tape, Gilbert Arenas gets suspended for the season, the Octmom's new beach-bod, Brad and Angelina. ANY(!) of those thing are more newsworthy than that stale "iPad sounds like a tampon" bit, which made the front page headlines on CNN.com. Come on, newsies, I really expect more out of you than that. What would Anderson Cooper think?

In other late-breaking news, the word "boner" is still really funny. More at 10. no comments

Let's face it. It's 2010, there are a gazzillion iPhone apps out there, and to be honest, I'm a little sick and tired of giving any old iPhone game a chance anymore. I've limped through hundreds of games that work just fine, only to forget about them a week later. Hell, I could count the number of quality, must-have iPhone games I own on two hands.

I think it's safe to say that Skybox (iTunes link / website) deserves to be on my must-have list.

Skybox is simple enough - you guide a falling block (called a "ship") through horizontal planes that have one open spot that's just big enough to fit your block. If you make it through the plane, you speed up a bit. If you don't you crash into it and slow down. That's about it. It doesn't sound like much, but everything seems to fit just right, from the classical score to the encouraging statements the computer tells you that are funny enough to make you want to read them (and get distracted enough to miss your next move). Although I would have liked to have a bit of rumble every time I miss a move, the gameplay itself is very well-balanced, and the touch sensitivity can be tweaked, so I really can't complain. As you progress through the game, more challenging ships are unlocked, which really keep the game feeling fresh. Another nice aspect is its integration with the AGON Online system, which includes leaderboards, an awards system, and facebook/twitter integration.

You can start this game and have fun within seconds. Skybox is worth every penny of its $1.99 price tag.

See it in action:
no comments